By Anne W. Semmes
On Saturday evening, September 10, at the Greenwich High School’s Performing Arts Center the Greenwich Symphony Orchestra (GSO) will welcome its new conductor and musical director, Stuart Malina, with his program full of a variety of American music, plus a Russian selection, Prokofiev’s 7th Symphony. “It’s Prokofiev’s last symphony with music that is directly speaking to the audience,” tells Malina. This maestro knows his music and will play George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” on piano, conducting from the keyboard.
The Greenwich Symphony has not only chosen a conductor with a reportedly magnetic stage presence, but an educator with a gift at sharing his knowledge of and love of music. Addressing his first program selections that include Leonard Bernstein’s “Three Dance Episodes” from the musical “On the Town,” and William Grant Still’s “Poem for Orchestra,” he tells, “What’s so wonderful about so much American music is that the great American composers like Bernstein, like Still, like Gershwin, were able to present music that has every reason to be in the concert hall but is original American music. It’s not music that comes from the Western European tradition. This is music that is infused with jazz and blues and spiritual elements. Elements that started here.”
Malina’s young life started not far from Greenwich, in Scarsdale, N.Y where his parents still live. That was a winning card to draw Malina in this direction from where he lives in Harrisburg, PA and serves as conductor and music director of the Harrisburg Symphony, now into his 22nd year. The former long serving GSO conductor David Gilbert had suggested Malina throw his hat into the ring of the GSO worldwide conductor search. The two have shared serving as music directors of the Lake Placid Sinfonietta in summertime, which Malina continues to do.
The wonder is that Malina also serves as principal guest conductor of the Florida Orchestra in Tampa Bay which counts this upcoming season, he’ll be conducting upwards of 30 concerts! But he adds, “That will just be for this next year,” as he’s stepping down from the Florida Orchestra at seasons end. He may well need a vacation then he notes! But he’s glad he’s been able “to make it all work.”
Part of the job of an orchestra he tells, “is to bring music to the audience that they’ll enjoy and appreciate,” but also, “to expand horizons and bring sounds and melodies that the audience may not be quite as familiar with.” He cites his four choices as being “extremely beautiful, extremely lyrical works of music.” And he’s “very excited” he’ll be playing Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” that he calls “one of the great pieces of all time for piano.” He times the year he played it in Carnegie Hall – in 2007 to the age of his then young son Zev.
“It’s kind of an unprecedented kind of piece in the way that it melds jazz elements and classical elements,” he describes. “The way that it goes back and forth from solo piano to orchestral playing and incorporates ragtime, as well as traditional jazz and swing. It’s just such a marvelous, original kind of piece.”
Hearing how Gershwin had done some of his composing in Greenwich, especially “Porgy and Bess,” Malina shared, “‘Porgy and Bess’ is also a piece that’s near and dear to me. I think that it’s probably the piece of music that I’ve conducted more than any other piece.” In a “very large tour” of “Porgy and Bess” he conducted in the 1990’s, he says, “I probably did 60 or 70 performances over the course of several months.” The last concert he conducted with the Harrisburg Symphony before the pandemic was a concert version of “Porgy and Bess.” “And what jumps to my mind when I think about ‘Porgy and Bess’ is the bittersweetness of it. The idea that Gershwin could write this masterpiece in his late thirties and then he would die soon thereafter.”
So, might Malina’s selection of Bernstein’s “Three Dance Episodes” from “On the Town” speak to the need to bring in younger crowds to GSO concerts with perhaps some Pops concerts? “I do think it would be very wise,” he says, “for the orchestra to do some Pops concerts.” He’s learned this has appeal with the GSO board. And frankly, he states, “I think that I do it very well. I’ve been doing Pops concerts for many years, and I know what people like to hear and watch, but what’s lovely about the Bernstein piece is again, it covers many traditions. It comes from Broadway. And so, you’ll hear ‘New York, New York, it’s a hell of a town,’ in the final number. These are familiar melodies. But at the same time, it’s just such a dazzling piece for orchestra.”
“And so,” he continues, “I’m delighted that Leonard Bernstein is kind of a hero to many conductors and musicians of my generation. I met Bernstein a number of times. I studied with him briefly at Tanglewood in the late 1980s, shortly before he died. And he was just one of these towering figures in American music in so many different ways. He might have been the most complete musician in American history in terms of, he was a great composer, a great pianist, a great conductor, a great educator. There aren’t many people who were like that. And so, it’s great that we’re able to continue performing his music. It’s just delightful music.”
For more information on the September 10 and 11 concerts visit www.greenwichsymphony.org
